I get that your purpose is not to connect me with friends, family and long lost high school classmates.

No, no, your purpose is to sell advertising. You get money for ads that are created by companies who want to reach select target markets. This all happens on a social media platform that’s free of charge and I can access it 24/7 on lots of different types of technology.

It’s key to remember that you get what you pay for and if you haven’t paid for something, then you’re not really the important person in the relationship/business arrangement.

I understand, I really do. But it still bugs me when I see advertising like this…

Way to play on a woman’s self esteem Facebook!

It’s bad enough when there are Hollywood stars who have personal trainers and mounds and mounds of money so that they can afford to have the pounds melt away.

And even if a woman has a great metabolism, losing weight and getting back into your pre-pregnancy form isn’t always easy. You may have stretch marks, or some extra jiggily parts… but that’s OK, it’s all part of pregnancy and you shouldn’t worry about it.

Heck, there’s pressure enough to be the prefect mother and just getting a shower every few days can seem like a challenge (especially in those first few weeks!).

I don’t want to throw stones from my own glass house either. At the end of April, I returned to Weight Watchers (WW). I became a lifetime member back in 2009. I loved attending the meetings and found it to be a program that encouraged me to eat healthier and to exercise and move more at they’ll say in WW speak. I’ve lost almost 20 lbs, I’m really proud of my progress so far and I’ll write more about it later.

As a marketing and communications professional, I understand the drive behind advertising. But it doesn’t mean I have to like the approach that is sometime involved. So I’ll say what I’m thinking, “Not cool Facebook. Not cool at all.”

I’m on Facebook so that I can keep in touch with friends, family and even some professional contacts that have become friends whom I want to share more than the odd random interaction with every few months. I like to read the latest location and national news. I enjoy seeing photos of someone’s adorable dog, their vacation photos, or a cute child that deserves to have someone click the like button.

It’s too bad those advertising bots and their fancy algorithms can’t read this post to help refocus their ads for me.

At the end of the day, it’s nothing personal; it’s just business. But it still as frustrating as hell.

I managed to get picked up by NL Blogger’s Daily through a tweet I posted sharing the blog post. This is generated through paper.li and it’s a way you can create your own online newspaper. Once you set up some parameters, you can can automatically find, publish and promote articles, photos and videos from across the web. It’s an interesting concept and I’ve seen some various people using including some parenting bloggers and other industry-specific social media accounts (primarily on Twitter).

It’s always interesting to see when social media channels crossover. I think it helps to keep conversations going. It adds an element of fluidity to the whole thing. Maybe you see a news article on Twitter and there’s a hashtag you can follow to read what others are saying. Then you pop over to Facebook and see other people talking, commenting and sharing information about the same topic. The conversation continues.

How often will I recall a piece of news I read, yet I’ll have difficulty remembering if it was originally read either in a news alert, an post on Facebook, a tweet on Twitter or on a website or online news service.

Sometimes this can cause repetition and a lot of noise. And often it can cause certain news stories to seem more important because people active in social media are either sharing the information at a higher frequency, or you just notice it more because you’re not hearing about the other stuff that’s floating around in the news world.

But don’t worry, I won’t let this go to my head. I’ll try to stay grounded and humble…

I originally started writing this post in February 2012. I think it was before I was big into Pinterest and finding lots of unique food ideas. I can’t remember if it was Claire or Abby who inspired me to try these crazy things based on a photo they shared on Facebook… but it was a lot of fun!